Throughout the history of the post office, there has been a gradual evolution whereby the post office encourages mailers to prepare their mail in such a way as to reduce the effort required on the part of the post office for processing such mail. As an inducement to the mailer to prepare the mail in such a way so as to bring about faster mail delivery, the post office offers mailers a discount on such items as presorted mail and printing of 9 digit zip codes. Discounts are also given when the mail is produced in a manner allowing automatic processing with machines such as optical character recognition (OCR) sorters and bar code readers and sorters.
Even with present mail processing techniques that have come into being as a result of reduced postage rates for presorted mail, zip code mail and the like, the post office is still experiencing difficulties in meeting targeted delivery times for the mail. The primary reason for such difficulties is the increase in volume of mail that has taken place over the decades.
Systems and methods have been conceived and described wherein the efforts required by the post office to process mail has been reduced. One of the problems the post office faced previously was that a significant amount of mail presented to the post office did not have the required postage or did not meet the requirements of postal regulations. A scheme for overcoming this problem was disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/594,515, supra. In this patent application, a scheme is disclosed whereby mail is processed in such a manner that the mail is sorted to separate the local mail from the out of state mail, the out of state mail is placed in trays in accordance with their zip codes and a label is printed that identifies the mail in the tray for subsequent routing. As a part of this scheme, the post office is given a running account of the mail being processed so that the postage can be accurately determined and the post office is able to process the mail further without having to inspect the same to assure proper payment. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 641,985, supra, discloses a system whereby labels can be printed for the tray and the sacks into which mail is placed for a common carrier, particularly an air carrier.
Although the concepts described in these two patent applications addressed areas where implementation of activities on the part of the mailer would benefit the post office, there are still many areas where the amount of effort required by the post office can be reduced.
In the processing of mail, mail that is being processed by a mailer to obtain postal discounts is still sent to the post office. This includes non local mail that is subsequently forwarded to a mail carriers for delivery to postal distribution centers. Certain functions are performed within the post office after delivery of such mail to calculate the transportation costs, particularly the payment that must be made from the post office to the common carrier. The amount of payment is dependent on the weight and destination of the mail handled by the common carrier. As a result, mail is still processed through the post office and takes time and space away from the post office. Clearly, it would be advantageous if a scheme could be implemented whereby mail that is not within the servicing area of a local post office does not require handling by such post office.